Page 16 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #05

WILD NEWS

DISCOVERIES

Written by
STUART
The latest in scientific research from all over the animal kingdom. BLACKMAN

Spatial memory is an
important weapon for
lekking long-billed
hermit hummingbirds.

Q BIRDS

BRAIN POWER BEATS BRAWN

MALE LONG-BILLED HERMITS WITH A SHARP INTELLECT HAVE A COMPETITIVE EDGE OVER THEIR RIVALS.

ong-billed hermits aren’t the their display ground DID YOU KNOW? where meals were In itself, this proves only
flashiest of hummingbirds. to floating males to be found. that intelligence is useful
Q The long-billed
LBut neither are they hiding without territories. It hermit’s impressive “There was one when competing with other
their lights under a bushel. It follows that there’s beak is not the male who got all the males. But Araya-Salas suspects
turns out that it’s their prowess an advantage to longest among trials right; he never they are also advertising their
in intellectual matters that they forage as quickly and hummingbirds. missed the sugar-filled intellectual abilities to females.
That honour goes
are keen to advertise. efficiently as possible. feeder,” says Araya- “Males of this species, like
to the sword-billed
These inhabitants of Central And remembering hummingbird, whose Salas. “And there was a many other hummingbirds,
and South American rainforests the locations of the beak is longer than male that did no better perform elaborate visual
have an eight-month breeding prime feeding spots its body, excluding than you would expect displays for visiting females,” he
its tail feathers.
season, during which males in a complex forested there was the whole range of says. “The complexity of these
by chance, which is a
Michael & Patricia Fogden/Minden/FLPA and court visiting females. Araya-Salas of Cornell University performance on display.” tasks that could potentially work
displays strongly suggests that
gather together at leks, where
third of the time. So
landscape takes
these are cognitively demanding
they defend a small territory
considerable brain-power.
Experiments led by Marcelo
And crucially, their
as honest indicators of cognitive
Of course, the males must
prowess for choosy females.”
performance in the memory
used arrays of three artificial
continue to feed during all this
intense activity. The trouble
flowers – only one containing
tasks predicted their ability to
hold a territory better than any
is, whenever they head off in
sugar – to test the ability of
search of nectar, they risk losing
LINKhttp://go.nature.com/2FpZdC5
16 BBC Wildlife foraging males to remember measures of athletic ability. SOURCEScientific Reports Spring 2018